In this episode, I’m speaking with Suzanne Tucker of Generation Mindful, a website dedicated to helping kids learn how to regulate their emotions.

Big Ideas

While working as a physical therapist, Suzanne realized there was much more going on in people’s wellbeing than just the physical body. The whole health approach to healing and wellness is what led her to start Generation Mindful.

Parents and educators love the science of positive discipline but struggle to apply the science of connection practically in their everyday lives.

Generation Mindful offers evidence-based tools and toys that make connection a habit in homes and schools. They nurture emotional intelligence via play and positive discipline.

Generation Mindful helps people overcome perfectionism, feelings of inadequacy, and promote connection. Their mission is to raise an emotionally healthy world.

Generation Mindful tools and toys can be found in 70 countries and their community is in nearly 100 countries around the world.

Quotes

Suzanne: “If you’re looking to get on the superhighway of spiritual growth, just jump on it because you’re going to find it in Parenthood.”

Suzanne: “Parenting makes life apparent.”

Suzanne: “It was that love of whole health and learning about ourselves and being on a spiritual journey myself that brought me into doing empowerment-based education with families.”

Suzanne: “We’ve got to make it easy. We’ve got to make it fun. We’ve got to get this evidence-based brain science into everyday life because people feel ‘not enough’ and it’s not right.”

Audrey: “Instead of punishing someone for being dysregulated and needing to calm down, making it a thing that ‘hey–we all have these moments. Let’s find a way to just create a space where we can just feel good.'”

Audrey: “Adults, we need this, too, the candle that smells good, the book we really like, that calms us down, and a cup of tea.”

Suzanne: “It’s not just about education and support (because we need both of those.) What I found in my work is that children are concrete learners and so are adults. We are very much supported when we open a box–it’s concrete.”

Suzanne: “It’s really about embodying wisdom. It’s about creating this community that inspires you and is there to hold your hand online. We’ve got all these online supports, the blog, a private community for anyone who goes through our six-week self-paced course.”

Suzanne: “It really starts from the inside out. And we’re about supporting and inspiring you into what we think of as a mind shift into self-awareness first, ‘connect before you correct’ and just seeing misbehavior as an unmet need, without the guilt, and training ourselves out of shame as a motivator and guilt as a filter.”

Suzanne: “We are all about creating habits because habits lift us up. Habits just happen…We want to connect, but if it’s not a habit, it’s not happening.”

Suzanne: “It’s really about the brain science of honoring emotions as sacred and integrating.”

Audrey: “Name it to tame it. We all talk about that.”

Suzanne: “Just by labeling the things that happened in the day and which mood group would I associate them with, is like the middle brain doing pushups. The hippocampus, that really important part of the brain that helps with emotional regulation, is going down, doing the pushups and it’s training that part of the brain that wants to react. It’s actually laying the neural synapsis so it can learn to respond.”

Suzanne: “Once we get over our fear we’re empowered to show up powerfully with what is. Then we can source the tools and support to just be where we are and meet the child where they are.”

Audrey: “You see the kids’ behavior is just like the tip of the iceberg and all those things going on underneath; it’s like the behavior is just kind of a clue. Be curious. They aren’t trying to ruin your day or be terrible. They’re communicating something that they’re having difficulty articulating.”

Suzanne: “Where is the source of emotional intelligence in relationships? It’s in pausing to look in each other’s eye, to listen, to share. It is so simple, yet how hard it is in everyday modern life to carve out a sweet little five minutes to talk about things that matter?”

“HAPPY CAMPERS–full of practical and powerful tools that parents can immediately put into practice–lights a path to help parents nurture a culture of connection in our homes…to help our children become their best selves.”

—Tina Payne Bryson, Ph. D., LCSW, and New York Times bestselling co-author of The Whole-Brain Child and The Yes Brain